Dictators can bear anything except mockery. Like court jesters of old(e), stand-up comedians are fearless truth-tellers, saying out loud what we’re all secretly thinking and getting away with it—maybe even changing the world! Charlie Chaplin! Lenny Bruce!! George Carlin!!!

So what happened?

Comedians used to make jokes. Now they make amends.

On August 27th during a performance in Phoenix, notoriously unhinged African-American comic Katt Williams told the audience:

“If y’all had California and you loved it, then you shouldn’t have gave that motherf***er up, bitches!”

Someone yelled, “This IS Mexico, motherf***er!”

And so began a six-minute Mexican standoff, with Williams berating the heckler, chanting “U-S-A!” and singing “The Star-Spangled Banner.”

“Do you remember when white people used to say, ‘Go back to Africa,’ and we had to tell them we don’t want to?” Katt yelled as the audience whooped its approval. “So if you love Mexico, bitch, get the f*** over there!”

“Comedians used to make jokes. Now they make amends.”

LaughSpin asked whether Williams had acted “patriotic or just racist” with the cloying concern-troll earnestness that’s standard issue at (of all places) websites run by and for comedians. Every week, these sites cover some controversy involving a stand-up and an aggrieved (insert minority group) audience member. I need to remind myself I’m reading Splitsider instead of a Seven Sisters student paper, what with all the hand-wringing about “homophobia,” “misogyny,” “date rape,” and whether or not certain jokes are “appropriate” or “go too far.”

In short, even professional comedians and their fans have embraced the elites’ “eat your (organic) spinach” ethos. I thought everyone understood that those “You know what? I’ve learned something today…” codas on South Park were goofs on the cringeworthy “very special episodes” that once propped up faltering sitcoms. The ribald “poker scene” from Louie is every hipster’s new favorite thing because it features a somber, chilling (and highly inaccurate) etymology of the word “faggot”—not in spite of it.

There were over one hundred news stories about Katt Williams last week according to Google, but only one speculated about his rant’s possible—what’s that expression they like?—“root causes.” (Yeah: me.)

The story ran its usual course: Self-appointed “community leaders” and “activists”—in this case, presente.org—unveiled the obligatory “online petition” demanding an apology from Williams.

That’s when things got confusing. An apology was issued and promptly accepted by one Rev. Jarrett Maupin, who’d been “organizing a boycott” against Williams but now wants him to return to Phoenix and “show his commitment to the Latino community.” This is all pretty damn funny, since Maupin is black. (He’s also an Al Sharpton protégé, complete with legal troubles.)

But a few days later, Williams was on CNN claiming his publicist had issued an apology without his permission.

“I’m not allowed to [apologize],” he explained to anchor T. J. Holmes. “As a stand-up, the only thing I sell is uncensored thought. I’m not allowed, then, to come back the next day and apologize….If a person starts their heckling with ‘F*** America,’ then that gives me the right to defend my country.”

That was “Opie” of radio’s Opie & Anthony Show talking about the Carolla vs. GLAAD “controversy” and other recent—to coin a phrase—“wit hunts.” Topmost on everyone’s mind at the time was Tracy Morgan. Another flaky African-American comedian, Morgan was obliged to go on a pro-homosexual “awareness raising” apology tour after “joking” that if one of his children ever talked to him “in a gay voice,” he’d kill him.

Opie and Anthony railed against this booming new “business” of apologizing—let’s call it “Big Sorry”—and were joined by comic Jim Norton, who compared Morgan’s humiliating repentance road show to a slave auction in “the f***ing 1700 slavery days, where they held that poor bastard captive.”